The renewable energy boom during the recent past has brought some significant advances to the energy sector, but renewable technologies and the conventional electricity grid are not necessarily suited for each other. A couple of major problems exist in this area. First, the modern grid operates on AC power, while renewable energy sources (e.g., solar panels) generate DC power. The conversion from DC to AC creates avoidable inefficiencies in the grid, which is further aggravated when the power is converted from AC back to DC to operate modern DC appliances (e.g., cell phones, laptops, and LED lamps).
A second problem with renewable energy sources is their inherent variability in power output (e.g., solar panels when shaded), which warrants a large amount of storage in order to ensure a consistent and reliable power delivery to the nodes of the grid. In particular, duration of power supply (number of hours in a day) in rural areas of developing countries and quality of supply (voltage and frequency) are highly uncertain and intermittent. This is both expensive and difficult to scale for the grid operator. Furthermore, traditional grids suffer from power theft, making the already-expensive renewable energy sources even more expensive. For example, in India energy theft is a major issue in rural communities, where distribution companies incur AT&C losses of over 58% most of which is due to theft and pilferage.
Moreover, the electricity distribution companies in these areas charge consumers a minimum fixed monthly fee irrespective of power supply/consumption. Thus, in several cases people pay more for electricity than what they actually consume just to maintain the connection. Most electrical appliances today are DC powered and the most promising renewable source of power is solar, which also generates DC power. Thus, in areas where power generation and most of the consumption is in DC, there is a need for DC transmission and distribution to reduce power losses through several layers of conversion.
Prior art patent publications US 2010/0207448 A1 and US 2012/0080942 A1 are considered as relevant to the present invention. However, the cited prior art basically describe ideas and concepts rather than concrete technical solutions to the problems. These ideas and concepts have been discussed in several publications prior to the disclosure of the admitted prior art.
However, the existing grids supplying A.C. power or hybrid power (i.e., a combination of A.C. & D.C. power), suffer from distribution problems. In particular, quantum of generation of non-conventional and variable voltage power (D.C.) is not constant due to natural uncertainty. Further, the A.C. supply from the grid is totally irregular particularly in rural areas, and so is the situation for hybrid supply. In gist, there is no reliable system and process available for AC or DC power distribution to ensure equitable and substantially regular power supply by eliminating power theft, and maximizing the generation/distribution efficiency by implementing distributed maximum power point tracking and intelligent energy demand response techniques.
The foregoing examples of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.